Local SEO Statistics for 2027: What Google and Official Data Actually Say

One small waste management company in our free directory turned up in Google for its own name, according to our Search Console data. What Google showed was our listing page, at position 5.5. The company has a website of its own, yet Google decided a directory page described it well enough to display. It's a small moment, but it tells you a lot about how local search works: Google forms its view of a local business from all the places that business turns up, and the business's own site is just one of them.

That moment is why we wrote this page. Plenty of local SEO statistics pages recycle the same set of thirty numbers, and many of them have no traceable origin. We went the other way. The sources behind every number below are Google, a government statistics office, a regulator or an independent research body, and each figure links back to the original. If a number comes from our own online business directory data, we say that.

Key local SEO statistics at a glance

How does Google rank local businesses?

Google mostly sorts local results by three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how closely your profile fits the search, distance is how far you are from the person searching, and prominence is about your reputation, which covers links and reviews. Google also says money can't buy a better local ranking.

The wording below comes from the help page Google publishes on improving your local ranking. The page is short, yet most business owners haven't read it.

You control Relevance more than any other factor. Google describes it as "how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for." Suppose a homeowner types "boiler repair" and your profile only says "plumber" with no services listed: Google has to guess, and you've left it to do that. So fill in your primary category, any secondary categories, each service, and a plain-language summary of your work.

Distance is the one you can influence least. Google says it "refers to how far each business is from the customer who's searching." Your shop can't move closer to every customer, but you can keep your address or service area accurate so Google doesn't work from wrong information.

Prominence is where your reputation counts. Google says it "means how well-known a business is" and adds that it's "also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking."

The page also has a sentence worth printing and taping above your desk: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." So if someone offers you a guaranteed place in the map pack, they're selling what Google says doesn't exist.

How big is the fake review and fake listing problem?

The problem is large: during 2024, Google took down or blocked over 240 million reviews that violated its policies, and it removed or blocked more than 12 million fake Business Profiles. Bad edits to places were blocked too, at over 70 million, and over 900,000 accounts were restricted. Most of the fake reviews were gone before anyone had seen them.

The numbers are from Google's April 2025 update on how it keeps business information trustworthy, and they matter for two reasons.

First, they show what happens to shortcuts. Bundles of bought five-star reviews, review swap groups and fake second locations are the very patterns these systems are built to catch, and when they're caught the reviews vanish and the account behind them can be restricted.

Second, they suggest why real signals count for more each year. When Google discards hundreds of millions of fake reviews, the genuine ones that remain carry more weight, and honest reviews from real customers arriving at a steady trickle will win out over a sudden burst.

Google isn't the only one with rules here. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission's final rule on fake reviews bans fake reviews, buying reviews conditioned on being positive or negative, and undisclosed insider reviews. Our online review statistics and rules guide goes through it in full.

What do mobile habits mean for local search?

Local search is a phone activity. Pew Research Center reports that 91% of U.S. adults own a smartphone and 98% own a cellphone of some kind. In the UK, Ofcom says adults spend about four and a half hours online a day, mostly on smartphones. Your profile and website are judged on a small screen first.

According to the Pew Research Center mobile fact sheet, a national survey of 5,511 U.S. adults, about nine in ten people own a smartphone, up from 35% when Pew first asked in 2011.

Ofcom's Online Nation report found that UK adults spend an average of about four and a half hours online a day, 10 minutes more than the year before, and that most of that time is on a smartphone.

Compare that with the HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025, which draws on real Chrome users across millions of sites. It finds that 48% of mobile websites pass all three Core Web Vitals, while 56% do on desktop. Put simply, roughly half the mobile web is still slow or jumpy for the people most likely to phone you from the car park.

Imagine it's Sunday and someone is standing at a shut shop, searching for "key cutting near me" and tapping the first result that has good reviews. If that website takes eight seconds to load, they'll tap the second result instead, and they won't be wondering about your Core Web Vitals as they go.

Are AI answers changing local search?

Yes, and the change is measurable. Pew Research Center found that when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits compared with 15% when no summary appeared, and Ofcom reports that about 30% of UK searches now show AI Overviews. Local businesses feel this on question-style searches first.

Pew's July 2025 study followed the actual browsing of 900 U.S. adults. Only 18% of their searches produced an AI summary, though longer, question-style searches set one off more often. For a local business that counts, because many customer searches begin as questions long before they become business names: "how much does a boiler service cost", "do I need a permit for a fence", "what does a dental crown involve".

If a summary answers a question like that, fewer visitors click through to a site. People still go looking for a business they trust when it's time to act, and your Business Profile, reviews and name recognition do the work at that point. So AI answers move some of the load from your website's informational pages to your profile and reputation. That's a good reason to maintain a complete profile and a steady flow of reviews, and to write service pages whose first two sentences answer the common question, so that if an AI summary does quote someone, you've got a fair chance of being the one. Our AI search statistics page covers the click data in more depth.

Which Business Profile numbers should you watch?

The numbers to watch are calls, direction requests and website clicks. Google's performance report records how often people tap your call button, along with direction requests, site clicks, the search terms people used, profile views, bookings and messages. Because these actions sit nearer to revenue than a ranking position does, check them monthly.

Google defines each one on its performance metrics page. Calls are "the number of times a customer clicked on the call button on your Business Profile." Directions are "how many people asked for directions to your business." Views are "how many people viewed your Business Profile on Search and Maps."

A ranking report can tell you that you moved from fourth to second for "dentist near me" in one postcode. The performance report tells you whether more people actually called. When the two disagree, trust the calls. We explain how to read each metric in our Google Business Profile dashboard guide.

What our own directory data shows

Our free business directory at GreatInflux has more than 1,500 listings. In 90 days, the search "list your business" gave our site 1,193 impressions at an average position of 16.6 but only 3 clicks, while "List your business for free" earned 6 clicks from 45 impressions at position 14.

We took two lessons from this, and they hold for any local business.

First, people actively look for places to be listed, since business owners know that appearing in more trusted places helps.

Second, the drop from page one to page two is brutal. The phrase with the most impressions sat at position 16 and produced almost nothing, while the smaller phrase at position 14 did better because it was a closer fit for what people wanted. A small move up on the right phrase is worth more than a big impression count on the wrong one.

The story at the top of this page gives a third: a directory's listing page can rank for a business's own name. So keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere, because a directory page may be the first thing a customer sees and it should be right.

Figures you'll see elsewhere that we left out

Other pages claim that "46% of all Google searches are local", that "76% of people who search nearby visit a business within a day" and that "28% of local searches lead to a purchase." Any of them could be accurate. We couldn't get to a current original source for any of them, only other blogs repeating the number, so we left them out.

The reason is practical. If a number goes into a pitch deck, a budget request or a client report, someone is likely to ask for its source, and each figure on this page has a link you can hand over.

A local SEO action plan built on these numbers

1. Complete every field of your Business Profile. You have the most say over relevance, and Google says that complete information helps it match you to the right searches.
2. Pick the most accurate primary category. Of all the relevance choices you make, this is the most important one.
3. Ask every customer for an honest review and reply to all of them. Don't buy reviews, swap them or filter them.
4. Fix your mobile speed. Check your site with our free website analysis, and read the mobile Core Web Vitals results before the desktop ones.
5. Keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere. Begin with Google, move on to your website, and finish with directories.
6. Get listed in a few trusted places, not hundreds. Fewer, better listings keep your details consistent.
7. Track calls and directions monthly, not rankings daily. These are the numbers that end up as revenue.

Our affordable local SEO service begins with these very steps, and you can use it if you'd like help applying them.

Sources and method

Every source here is a primary one: the HTTP Archive Web Almanac, Ofcom, Pew Research Center, plus Google's help pages and blog. We checked each figure against the source page before publishing. The figures that are ours come from the Search Console property for greatinflux.com, covering 90 days up to early November. Agency surveys and any number we couldn't trace back to its original publisher stayed out.